I just wrote an article about Diablo 3 gems for my blog and would like to share same thought with you guys. I have been thinking about who will sell gems on the AH and I came to the conclusion that maybe only traders and players trying to make some quick money may end up selling them. Really, why would you sell gems on the AH if you will need 20000 level 5 gems to make a level 14 gem? Players are better off just sticking to their gems until they have full sets of level 14 gems, which will take a long time.

To good point about this is that even though gems can be unsocketed from gear (which means there will be more and more gems in the market every day) the supply may not increase that much, which in turn would keep nice prices. Of course I can be all wrong and everybody starts dumping their gems like crazy in the AH :scratchchin:

My initial thought is that if at anypoint gems just start flooding the market because everybody just has too many of them, they'll add a sink which will destroy them for mats that will be used for something awesome. Say, use the jeweler to bust up lvl 14gems to get specific type of dust that does a unique powerful thing.

But, largely I think I agree with you. I know I will not be selling any of my gems. And in all probability I will be watching the market and gobbling them up if they seem reasonably priced. No idea how many gems I will need in all, but whatever it ends up being, multiply it by at least 5 for all the toons.

I think I'll just sell my gems in the begging when most players don't have access to them. Honestly, I'll only start thinking about gems when I need the bonus stats to survive and kill things at Hell and Inferno.

I think I'll just sell my gems in the begging when most players don't have access to them. Honestly, I'll only start thinking about gems when I need the bonus stats to survive and kill things at Hell and Inferno.

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The problem right there is ... you'll likely be in Hell/Inferno within 72 hours ...

One thing worth considering is that in my experience a large portion of the gaming population seem to be almost incapable of rational thought when online, I don't know who is going to sell what but I do know that there are a great many people who don't really live in the real world, they just make stories up in their head and run with it so while it may not make logical sense I could see people AH'ing gems because although it may not seem like there is a market for it there are always people who won't be thinking clearly or who won't want to farm things for themselves, don't underestimate the power of a "shortcut" either, if there is a good enough reason to have level 14 gems then there will be people who will want to buy them up to the point where it could be entirely possible to see 20k level 1 gems selling for a higher value than the level 14 gem it makes... We've seen it before in other games but only time will tell.

Short answer to why would *I* sell gems on the AH... If there is a market, I'll sell anything... The better question would be why would someone "buy" gems and to that I would answer, if you have 19k and don't want to wait to farm the rest you might not care about the math involved as the only math you are looking at is 5 more days farming, spending whatever it costs to buy 1k gems or buying the level 14 gem itself... That's ultimately the behaviour that would drive such a market, it's not the people looking at the whole picture, it's the casual people that only need a few more and don't want to wait for them, AKA. the shortcut.

Short answer to why would *I* sell gems on the AH... If there is a market, I'll sell anything

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You're right. Actually I was not wondering if we will sell gems, but if the casual players will be selling it on the AH, since they are better off not selling it. I should have asked "Why casual players will sell..." or "Will casual players sell...".

Well, if you need gold for repairs or simply buying some upgrades, you might be better off selling the gems. You're all thinking about the absolute end-game when you're trying to get the absolute best gear possible, while in fact the way there might be shorter if you sell your gems and buy item upgrades (thus being stronger and able to farm more efficiently). Only time will tell what is actually the best, and even then, if it was possible to tell what was best, the prices would balance themselves up until enough people can't tell what is best

I went to register just so I could reply, and apparently I've had an account here since 2003. Go figure.

Anyways, I just wanted to point out, that it's very likely that higher tier gems will not sell for proportionately what it cost to make them. As in, people are probably not gonna wanna pay 19,683 times the cost of a level 5 gem, whatever it is. People that wanna sell gems will likely find a sweet spot to combine to (it may even just be base level 5 gems) and then sell, and combining any higher is a loss, especially once you consider gold costs.

But as far as wanting to combine up to t14, I don't think it's really worth it, looking at the stats on the main site (the stats go up linearly, while the cost of upping is exponential). Likely again you'll wanna go up until it's a royal pain in the *** to go any further (729 t5s to make a t11 is a lot more reasonable, for example)

Gems are especially fun to speculate about because we know their stats and we know how they'll be used. We can do all sorts of practical math right now, and that can't be said about weapons or crafting mats.

I've read other guides about gems in D3, and I have a few unique points to make. I don't think enough has been said about the tedium of gem hording. If only people were willing to use the Horadric Cube then +40 life GCs wouldn't be worth so drastically much more than the average number of pgems it took to roll them. I think I should organize my thoughts into an article. The outline is this:

Trivial/negligible costs/concerns:

25 Pages of training and ~50k gold are required to train up to level 10. The Pages of Training are white confetti and people are making 20k/hr in the beginning of A1.

Obtaining plans for the last 3 tiers. Creating level 12, 13, and 14 gems requires plans with ilvls 61, 62, and 63, and that means farming elite mobs in Inferno. Oh wait, we're doing that anyway. And the plans will drop before our 20,000 pgems will.

The existence of gem levels 1-4. They will be totally worthless. They don't even vendor well.

Non-trivial costs/concerns:

Sure, it will take 20,000 pgems to make a lv 14 gem. But everyone is forgetting, that's actually 19,683 of the same pgem. There are 4 gems in the game. If you want a radiant topaz, and a perfect ruby drops, you'll naturally want to trade it.

Inventory/stash space. Gems stack, but only of the same level. Hence, gems may as well not stack, since every 3 gems will be promoted to save space anyways. As someone who collected flawless gems (and only flawless gems) I can imagine this getting out of control with 9 effective levels. People will sell pgems (lv 5, the highest which can drop) and buy higher levels at a premium just to not deal with it.

The 50 gold fee. If gem combining remains 3 > 1 all the way up then making a level 14 gem will cost 500k in fees!

The clicking! Each transaction requires a minimum of 5 mouse clicks. You gotta pick up those 19,683 pgems and drop them on the jeweler's screen. Then you have to take the resulting 6,561 lv 6 gems and turn them into 2,187 lv 7 gems. Are we having fun yet?

I also did some napkin math to guess what gems would be worth:

level 11: 750k

level 12: 2.25M

level 13: 6.75M

level 14: 20.25M

Now irrationally inflate the price of the level 13 and 14 gems since people will pay for top tier. And the highest demanded gem (Emerald or Topaz?) should go for a bit more since it's only 25% of the gem supply.

And three things which could go wrong with the speculation I've seen/made:

Blizzard implements 2 > 1 at level 12, right at the point where you need Inferno plans to progress. Makes sense to me.

The stats change. Right now level 13 and 14 gems are a horrible deal for the cost.

Gem Shrines anyone? Or the gem shrine effect as a quest reward? A single gem shrine could be worth 6,000 matching pgems!

Now irrationally inflate the price of the level 13 and 14 gems since people will pay for top tier. And the highest demanded gem (Emerald or Topaz?) should go for a bit more since it's only 25% of the gem supply.

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I assume you are estimating the cost of a level 5 gem to be about 1k gold?

Assuming that's true, and say gold prices are something low like 50 cents per 1k, that'd make a t14 gem worth about $10,000. Do you really see people paying that much for a t14 gem?

Assuming 50 cents per 1,000 gold is surely assuming a bit much. If people are making 20k/hr farming the beginning of A1 in the beta then those people are making $10/hr by farming the tutorial? Can't be. And some people in the beta are making more than that. Gold is going to be sold in units of 100k or 1M.

Guessing the gold <-> dollars conversion rate is too hard, so I gave my guess in the form of the gold. I did use the figure 1 pgem = 1000g. The pgem has an ilvl of 42 and should drop everywhere in Hell and Inferno. Given that stacks of gold are about 15g in the beta I'm predicting maybe stacks of 50-99g in Normal, 100-150g in Nightmare, 175-250g in Hell, and 300 in Inferno. That's kind of similar to D2. But in D2 a good "vendor coupon" was a skills item worth 25k-35k. In D3 a good salable item is only worth 1k. (Cheap vendors!) So if I found a few flawless gems per hour, and a few good vendorable items in the same hour... eh. Sure, I suppose a pgem is worth 1k in D3. If an average efficiency player is making 80k/hr in Hell then the cost of buying 20k pgems (20M gold) represents 250 hours of work! That's my estimate for now. (For USD, place a value on each productive hour of D3 played. Maybe $.50? Now a level 14 gem costs $125. Hm.)

I estimate the top dollar for any single D3 item will be $200. Some MMOs have had legendary items which have pushed $1,000, but D3 is different. D3 is an ARPG, not an MMO. In D3 there are no one-per-server or once-per-month item spawns. The crafts in Diablo 3 are simple and similar to scratch tickets. I haven't played Eve Online, but I heard that some of the things players can build would take an entire guild weeks to roll! Wow! What's the most expensive D2 item right now? A perfect Annihilus for a popular class? Even that doesn't compare. I think the good items in D3 are going to be $20 USD or less after a year. And back to gems, I think the top tiers will stay high despite never leaving circulation. Everything except a belt can have a socket. Your favorite ring with 3 mods can have a socket. People will spend the endgame leveling up their gear for a marginal 1% increase, just to have something to do.

They will sell for sure. But one need to figure out at what stage the gaming population is at any given moment. Since they are multiple factors here such : x% life increase, bonus experience per monster kill, x% gold find, x% magic find, +damage, etc.

The cost to combine jewels just changed from insignificant to significant. All previous math by myself and others was done assuming 50g per transaction. With 50g per transaction it still cost something around 500k to combine those 20,000 pgems into a Radiant Star, which is large but not huge. The level 10 or 11 gems that us smart buyers want would've been cheap to make.

Crafting gems just became 25 times more expensive at the lowest level (5), where it matters most. Gems are now going to take millions of gold to make and the Radiant tiers are going to take tens of millions. If players are making 5 figures an hour, that's a lot of hours. These gems should be ridiculously valuable.